


Matched Neurosis

by Miss_sabre



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Bottom John, Character Study, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gun Violence, Gunplay, M/M, S&M, Top Sherlock, Violence, Violent Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-19
Updated: 2013-11-19
Packaged: 2018-01-02 00:53:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1050582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_sabre/pseuds/Miss_sabre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Violence lurks just under the surface of Sherlock, under his skin and in his heart. That was never a secret. The real secret is that John can match him for every violent urge.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Matched Neurosis

**Author's Note:**

> Much thanks to [Tartanfics](http://archiveofourown.org/users/tartanfics) who beta'd four drafts of this over two years as I worked on it in fits and starts. Go read their writing!
> 
> Warnings: PTSD. Lack of gun safety, blood, drugs, excessive violence, unsafe BDSM, strangulation, wrists, possible dub-con. Kinky, kinky, gunplay.

“No, Jesus... just, just stop, Sherlock!”

Sherlock had the thug who’d kidnapped me shoved into the slick stone wall of the alley and the barrel of my gun pressed against the side of his neck. I am sorry to say that my only thoughts for the thug were disgust at his lack of composure. The man’s name was Larry, creatively dubbed the red-headed-killer by the media. He had killed and tortured five red-headed women in their homes, and left encrypted messages on their walls. An arbitrary similarity, used only as a ploy by Moriarty to interest Sherlock (“No, no, no, can’t you see that the fact that they’re red-heads is too mundane? This is not the work of a mere psychopath, this is the work of an artist”).

“Why, John?” Sherlock’s face was twisted up into a snarl that threw the sharpness of his features into relief, and his eyes never left the eyes of the man in his grip. “He wouldn’t have thought twice about doing this to you. You may recall the--”

“I don’t need to be reminded, thank you.” Fluorescent lighting glinting off cool steel blades played over my minds eye, drowning out for a moment the sound of rain and sleet, but I clamped down on it and steered my mind towards the present moment. Later, when I was alone in my room, I could sit for hours remembering exactly what happened, and what had almost happened. Then, I could indulge myself in memories of Afghanistan, the voices in the night, the patter of gunfire. I could imagine taking that gun and shoving it into the bastard’s mouth, pulling the trigger as soon as I had a chance to see the recognition and fear bloom over his face. I could hold it all in, and let it out later; hating myself, because since the war I’d turned into the kind of man who dreamed of killing, and because my mind had betrayed me with this damn PTSD. But there would be time for that later. For now my mind was clear and my hands were steady.

“Don’t,” I said, and my voice must have been stronger and steadier than I thought because Sherlock let up his grip on the thug a little, and glanced my way. “Let him go, the police will be here any minute.” Larry whimpered, and I couldn’t hold in a small noise of disgust.

“They wouldn’t have to know,” Sherlock gritted out, and I could see cool reasoning beneath the anger. I didn’t doubt him.

“Please, Sherlock.” He turned away from me and gripped the man so hard he let out another terrified moan, and I could see Sherlock’s knuckles whiten as he tightened the grip on my gun. Then he sighed and flipped the thug around expertly so that he could secure the man’s hands behind his back with a pair of handcuffs from his coat pocket. Once done, he pushed the man to his knees and shoved his head against the wall, perhaps a bit harder than necessary. He held it there while the man gasped a whimpered. Rain drops slid down down the sharp angles of Sherlock’s face, off his cheeks, off his nose, off his gun. “For you,” he said, and with a smirk completely out of place in this situation, he tossed me my gun.

* * *

Sherlock could be violent, manipulative, thoughtless, and sometimes outright cruel. That day, during the case of the “red-headed killer” had really shone a light on how… easily violence came to him, especially when he was in a rage. But I had never seen him cross the line, I had never seen him kill.

Me? I had killed. It was something I had learned to put behind me, most of the time. But I knew that didn’t mean I was without a violent streak. Perhaps that makes mine worse. I pretend to live in the confines of good behavior. I have everyone fooled. Sherlock, at least, never pretended.

As his flatmate, I was particularly familiar with his disregard for niceties. There were times it was harder to deal with him than others. Days when he was bored, days when he was craving. He would fix me with his grey eyes and a sneer to tell me all the things I didn't want to hear. It was one of these times that he brought my father’s drinking into it.

* * *

“Of course, you would know all about avoiding the issue. You are clearly the son of an alcoholic, probably a chronic severe alcoholic, with women issues.. Definitely abusive-- Was it your mother he focused on? Sister? Not you, I think--”

My hand had found his throat easily, pushing him down into the arm of the couch where he had been laying, bored. It was the first time I’d ever seen such open shock on his face. “Don’t. Ever. Speak of him. You hear me.” I pressed my hand into his throat harder for emphasis. It was all I could do to hold back, I was that angry. He was laying on the couch, at an odd angle, and I had all the advantage. I barely noticed his hands grasping at mine. It only takes about five pounds of pressure to crush a man’s windpipe. I knew I was close, and I could see the knowledge of it flash through his eyes. I leaned in harder, for just a second, and watched him struggle for air. How easy to crush his throat. His face was blotchy and red now. He was so close to the edge.

I let him go and left the flat for three days. I stayed at Harry’s, but I never told her why. The vision of Sherlock rubbing a bruised neck stayed with me constantly those three days, and in my dreams for weeks afterwards.

When I came back, I could hear frantic violin notes from our flat. They stopped as soon as I opened the front door, and when I entered the flat Sherlock greeted me with tea in his hands, which he offered to me with slightly averted eyes. “John. I am... sorry.”

I noted the light purpley red of a bruise beginning to fade on his neck and a little on his shoulder. Sherlock saw me looking and pulled his robe more closely around him with one hand, concealing a little more of the bruise.

I apologised as well, my tongue heavy and cottony from the guilt. That night we ordered take-away and watched a documentary on the telly. We could both forget it for a while. It had changed nothing, really. Not this time.

I promised that I wouldn’t let myself slip like that again.

* * *

Of course, I knew Sherlock could cross the line. If I had given it much thought, I might even have known it was inevitable. I had done it. Now, I had to watch him do it.

And, Jesus. He had done it for me.

* * *

It had happened in a second. Nothing dramatic. Just a quick moment of grappling, and then the gunshot had rung out. Sherlock’s eyes were wide, his features frozen. I knew I’d see him like that again in my dreams.

Sherlock looked at me, his face covered in blood, and my mind processed it as though in slow motion.“That was necessary, John. He was going to hurt you.” He sounded calm, like he was explaining to me why he had his latest experiment on the kitchen table, but I knew that face. God, I knew that voice. Measured. Distant. I’d heard it on countless soldiers. I’d heard it on me.

“Jesus,” I breathed out. This hadn’t been an official case, so we were covered there. No connection to the victim. Sherlock and I had just been coming back from a late dinner at Angelo’s (Sherlock had solved his last case that afternoon, murdered twins), when we’d been attacked by these two guys.

Shit. The second thug, a witness.

I looked over at him and he looked terrified. This was clearly not going as expected.

“Paying off a debt, were you? Drugs, obviously,” Sherlock said with his usual focus, completely ignoring the man that he still held up.. “But you were both amateurs. No, worse, you’ve never done anything like this before in your life, so why were you sent to deal with us? Anyone who wants me dead should also have known that you’d never have succeeded. ”

“Sherlock,” I hissed, “the cops should be coming any minute now.”

Sherlock let the man he had shot fall to the ground with a thump, nothing but flesh and bones. Human waste. The gun, originally the thug’s gun, fell to the ground a moment later, making a curiously muffled sound.

Sherlock looked down at the body and froze.

That’s when the other man turned to run. The only witness to Sherlock’s crime. He would run and tell someone. Plenty of people would pay for that kind of information. Someone would find a way to incriminate Sherlock--

Unless I did something.

I chased him down before he could leave the alley and tackled him to the ground. Then I killed him.

It was easier than I’d thought it would be. I’d never killed a man with my bare hands before. I knew human life was fragile, but there’s a difference between the quick cold fragility of pulling a trigger, and the feeling of slowly crushing the life out of someone. I used one hand to cover his mouth, and another to crush his windpipe before he could scream. The man struggled, coughed blood, and finally went limp under me. But there was no time to hate myself. I had to keep Sherlock safe, and I couldn’t draw more attention with another gunshot.

I turned around with my hands still around the man’s neck and looked at Sherlock. Sherlock wasn’t looking at me, he was still staring down at the body of the man he’d killed.

“Sherlock, look at me. What am I missing?”

Sherlock looked at me, his eyes shone white through the warm blood on his pale face, but he didn’t say anything.

“Sherlock, we need to do something. We need to make sure no one knows who did this.”

Something passed over Sherlock’s face “The other one…”

“I know. I killed him, but I need your help. We have to erase our presence. Tell me how.”

He looked down at the body beneath me, he looked back up at me. I saw the moment he clicked his brain into work mode.

“We’re in a bad part of town, but not the poorest. That gives us 6.4 minutes, give or take.” His words were barely audible, but I still took that as a good sign.

“How do we hide this?”

He told me what to do. He snapped the orders out, quick, controlled, like he’d just walked into a crime scene. He looked fine.

Still, I grabbed his hand to keep him anchored as he guided us unseen through our city and towards 221b Baker street.  
* * *

I was waiting for Sherlock to fall apart, and Sherlock, of course, knew it. It was two hours later and he was pacing around the flat with his usual frenetic energy (well, usual when he was on a case). I wondered if he’d deleted it. And if he could delete it, if he’d killed before.

“Not possible. Memories encoded in adrenaline don’t delete. I’ve tried.”

“How--” He waved me off, and I shut up. He continued his pacing. After a moment I tried again. “Sherlock--”

“Shut up, I need to think.”

I tried to break through his wall anyway. “But nothing you are thinking right now will help, Sherlock. I know. I’ve been there.”

“That was war.”

“It gets better, I promise.

“You have no idea what I’m thinking, and you know why? Because you are a good man, John. But I am not, and I never have been.”

I stepped forward, stopping him in his path. At the last minute he tried to turn away from me but I grabbed him and held on, forcing him to look me in the eye.“Right now, you are thinking about how easy it was to kill, how easy it would be for you to do again and again and again.”

Sherlock tried frantically to turn away, pulling in a hitched and broken breath, so I swung him around behind me, and shoved him into the bare bit of wall by the door where I had been previously standing. I was still hyped on adrenaline, so the force of it was harder than I intended. “Because you feel nothing, nothing except the overwhelming need to feel something. But there’s nothing, and it feels like there will never be anything ever again. You’re empty.” I think I yelled it. Sherlock stilled, putting all his focus onto to me. He looked much more pulled together than he had a moment ago.

“I’m always empty.”

“No, you’re not. No matter what you say. This is normal.”

“How do you know that?”

I laughed, and I was unsurprised to note that it was a nasty choked sound. “Because if that’s not normal, then I am fucked up, Sherlock. I am so fucked up.”

He used the sudden lessening of my grip to grab my shoulders hard enough to bruise me and flip us around. Now it was him pressing me hard against the wall. His face was inches from my ear, my neck, my cheek. “But I am more dangerous than you. I don’t have a strict moral code on my good days, but now... how will you ever trust me again. You will leave.”

“I killed too. You saw that.”

“Yes, but you did it for me.”

“And you killed for me, Sherlock. We’re matched.”

Then he was crushed against me again, hand reaching around, groping at my arse... no, grabbing for my gun. My body responded a little at the brief proximity of his fingers to my arse, surprising me, and then there was a gun pointed at my face. I closed my eyes and let out an involuntary whimper, before pushing that reaction as far down as I could and meeting his eyes. I could do this. This was perfectly normal.

“I’m dangerous,” he whispered. “I could pull this trigger right now. I know exactly what pattern your grey matter will make spread out against this wall.” The barrel of the gun was drifting down, drawing a line first down my left lobe, and then my neck and collarbone. It was cold still, despite how close it had been to my skin for so long. Or maybe it only felt cold against my flushed skin. I held my breath and kept absolutely still. Sherlock was looking at me, searching for something. He was trying to provoke me, I think. Or perhaps this was all for him. Maybe he needed to draw lines between what he could do, and wouldn’t. What I said right now mattered. Mattered very much.

“But you won’t. I know that. I trust you.” My words were coming out around several deliberate breaths. I know I sounded controlled but afraid.

With the gun keeping me against the wall, Sherlock was free to use his other hand to draw a steady finger down the other side of my face. He contemplated the gun as he lowered it even further. Past my chest, down my waist and to my hip bones. He used it to hook underneath my shirt and lift it up slightly, sliding it over my pelvis bone. It sent a shock through my body, not one borne entirely of fear and adrenaline. My body responded to the cold touch of the gun, to the nearness of Sherlock.

A moment of realization. Sherlock smirked, his eyes dark. It was a more familiar expression than the one from a moment ago.

I turned my head away, but Sherlock let my shirt drop down and forced the gun into my mouth, angling my head until I stared up at his eyes. He shifted his body closer and looked down at me, using his full height difference.

“The human brain can only do its best to process the signals the body gives it. Sometimes it mistakes fear for, say, arousal. Your pulse is speeding up, your hands are starting to feel clammy, and the blood is rushing to your head. It’s your choice.” I could feel his breath, hot against my forehead as he spoke. I wasn’t sure if his words were for himself or for me, but they were still measured, calm.

I closed my eyes and tried to count to ten, to fend off the blackness that was threatening to overwhelm me. This was too much, after everything, and I couldn’t sort my thoughts out. Sherlock killing a man. Sherlock’s mouth. Fragile bones cracking beneath my fingers. Sherlock’s fingers. A dark room in Afghanistan with men very well trained in knives tipping my chair backwards and proving to me how easy it can be, for some, to hurt. My cock hardening. Moriarty with a gun in my mouth strapping semtex to me. My body screaming with every tiny movement Sherlock made. Afghanistan and London and 221b rolled up into one thing, and a gun forcing my jaw wide, clacking against my teeth. The slight pressure of it, the feel of it filling up my mouth, was making me feel hot and dizzy in a way that wasn’t entirely uncomfortable. All of it, everything, was threatening to take over. My breathing, coming in ragged bursts, echoed in my head. I was falling, falling.

No. This was Sherlock. He was in a very bad place right now, but he was still Sherlock.

I stilled, and deliberately opened my eyes to look at him straight on for the second time. Sherlock breathed out, and I wondered if he’d been holding it.

“Sherlock, I...” I tried to say, even with the gun in my mouth. I figured Sherlock would understand me. But “I” what? Was afraid and desperately aroused all at once? My cock was hardening as we spoke. Sherlock would know. He was close enough that he could probably feel the beating of my heart, and he could definitely see my pupils.

Well, that had been easy. It had been a long while since I’d got any. Sherlock would know that too.

Instead of waiting for me to formulate words, Sherlock silenced me by putting the pressure back on the gun in my mouth, and drawing a thumb down my jawline. He shifted closer to me, stepping so that his feet bracketed mine, his body nearly touching mine in a hundred places, and far enough away that I was straining towards him even as the gun kept me still.

Sherlock began to unbutton my shirt with one hand, and I let out a grunt of pleasure, and I think I heard Sherlock make a noise somewhere between surprise and a groan himself. He was curiously steady and I wondered what part of him was doing this to me. Was it his cold, clinical self, or was it the Sherlock who moments ago had been falling apart because he’d killed a man?

And, god, whichever side it was, I liked it. This was so profoundly fucked up.

He flicked open my shirt, and splayed his hand right in the center of my chest, exerting enough pressure that I gasped around the gun in my mouth. “Hands behind your head. Now,” he growled. I obeyed, still not trembling. He pulled the gun out of my mouth and pressed it against my temple, and with his left hand he began to undo my trousers.

A wave of intense pleasure hit me as his fingers slid into my pants, before they’d even had a chance to touch me. “Oh god, Oh god, Sherlock.”

“Shut up, don’t say my name.” With the same hand that was holding my gun, he managed to grab a handful of my hair and force me to look up. “If you make a sound right now, I will shoot you. I swear to god. You know I can do it.” Sherlock positioned the gun against the side of my neck. To prove it to me, or to himself, he flicked the safety off.

I couldn’t help it, I closed my eyes and pulled in an unsteady breath, and let it go. I pulled in a second and a third. Finally I opened my eyes and nodded.

I had to breath in and out with only my nose as deliberately as possible while Sherlock slowly, torturously slid his hand into my boxers and wrapped his hand around my cock. I opened my mouth, but no sound came out.

“I want to hurt you. I want to hit you. I want--” His voice was starting to change, from the detached tone he’d been adopting back into the raw, rough edges of earlier. “I have always known exactly how fragile we are. How breakable human beings are. Now I know how easy it would be to pull this trigger right now, and then you would be gone. There is nothing standing between me and you. And I always want to hurt you, just to see what would happen.” He was roughly getting me off, hand sliding over my cock in time with his words, his fingers toughened and smooth at the same time. My heartbeat was taking over my whole body. I was breathing out of my mouth now, letting out breathy gasps, careful not to let any voice into it.

“I want to hit you.” He growled again.

I caught his eyes and nodded.

A look of surprise and fear flitted across his face. I imagined he couldn’t quite understand why I was letting him do this. But then he shoved my trousers and boxers down around my legs, took the gun and shoved it back into my mouth, hard enough this time that I was suddenly having a hard time breathing. My mind flailed wildly for a moment, telling me that the safety was off this time, and that I needed more air. I shut those thoughts down, tried to smooth them out into calm. Sherlock used his leverage and only a little pressure to guide me to my knees with the gun. Then he pulled it back out, leaving me gasping for air, and stepped around behind me. My hands were still behind my head, and with one hand he gripped my wrists, while he pressed the barrel of my gun into the nape of my neck for just a moment. I thought of the paper sheer skin over the veins in my wrists as his fingers dug into me, hard, and I thought of Sherlock’s finger slipping, blowing a hole through me right here.

I closed my eyes. Whatever happened now was out of my control. I could just let it happen to me.

Using the hand with the gun, he backhanded me across my shoulders. I didn’t cry out, but it was a near thing. He yanked my hands up high and hit me again. I could tell he was hitting me hard, but I couldn’t feel any pain. The only sound in the flat was the cracking noise of Sherlock hitting me, and Sherlock making sounds of exertion... or was that sobbing?

For a moment he let me go and I no longer had any idea what was happening. I wanted to turn around and hold him, stroke his hair, tell him it gets better, it gets easier. Or, I wanted to turn around and tackle him to the floor, pin him down. Find out what he would do if I flipped him over and started pounding into his arse. Instead, I stayed kneeled on the ground, with my ankles still entangled in my trousers, and my knees getting cold. The place where he’d struck me started to sting. I focused on that while I waited.

I heard his coat slide to the floor. It took all the control I had not to look. I had no idea what I was doing or what was happening anymore, and knew only that whatever it was I would let it all happen. “You may speak now.” He again gripped my wrists, but this time he shoved me forward so my chest and head hit the floor. I had to turn my head to the side, one cheek pressed hard into the carpet, in order to breath. I could again feel the gun pressed into the back of my neck. Sherlock drew lazy circles with the muzzle of the gun that felt like fire and ice cold steel, and I gasped out again. Then, remembering that I could speak now, I moaned out “Oh god, oh god, oh god-” a steady stream of words that were keeping me present. The blackness was again threatening to overwhelm my consciousness.

Sherlock positioned himself over me, kneeling himself now, legs on either side of mine, and I realized he’d stripped, and I could feel his cock, hard, next to my arse. With his left hand, he reached around my thighs and began stroking my cock again, this time slowly, first pulling the skin of my foreskin up over the sensitive head, and then slowly twisting his wrist to pull the foreskin down and using his thumb to gently and just barely graze the frenulum. His violin calluses added a slight edge of roughness. But by far what was keeping my mind the most preoccupied was what wasn’t happening. I could feel Sherlock’s cock hard and straining against my arse, it’s length spreading my cheeks apart. My words had devolved into nothing but a long, low keening noise, and everytime my voice hitched I could feel his cock jump. I tried to clench my arse cheeks closed around him, and was rewarded with a gasp, and the gun pressing harder against the back of my neck.

“Please Sherlock, god, you can have me. You can do anything to me.” Sherlock was now rutting up against me, but when I tried to move against him he made a harsh noise, and I stopped. His hand was still steadily working on my cock, but it was going just a bit faster now. At the exact moment I realized that Sherlock was bringing me over the edge he stopped and pulled his hips away from me.

“Nnnnghhhg.” I sounded desperate, I knew it, but I didn’t care. I unfolded my hands from behind my head and tried to twist around to face Sherlock, but then he was in front of me and holding my head down with a hand around the back of my neck. “Hands back behind your head.” His fingers gave a warning squeeze, and I complied. “Now, stay here. Don’t move a muscle, or you will regret it. He set the gun next to my head where I could see it and walked away.

I contemplated reaching out and grabbing it. Then I could do what I wanted to Sherlock--but no, that wouldn’t be right. Sherlock... My mind kept skipping on that one thought. Sherlock. It couldn’t go any further, not right now. So I stayed very still where I was.

He came back very quickly, and he purposefully strode toward me, grabbed the gun, and positioned himself behind me again, kneeling. He leaned his head towards me, and again put the hand with the gun next to my head, so that I could see that it wasn’t pointed at me.

“Anything?” he said. His lips touched my earlobe and his words sent a shiver down my spine.

“Anything.”

He took the gun and he shoved it into my mouth again, nearly making me gag. He wasn’t quite kneeling behind me anymore, but sort of kneeling beside me so that he could see my face. I gasped when I felt his left hand start to touch my arse, moving down along it, slipping into the crack between my cheeks, and finally finding my arsehole. I could feel the lube on Sherlock’s finger, but at the moment he wasn’t even pressing inside me, just circling the sensitive opening- Oh, oh god. He slid inside me, and I was surprised by how easily. Except for an initial muscle contraction he was able to push in with little resistance. I moaned around the gun in my mouth. I felt full, overflowing. The taste of metal in my mouth and Sherlock fingering my arse. His long middle inger just brushing my prostate. “Sherlock,” I tried to say, as red and black flashed in front of my eyes--Jesus, this was good. Sherlock slowly worked in a second finger. This one also slid in surprisingly easy, and soon had me loose and wide. I tried to meet Sherlock’s eyes, but it wasn’t easy. I could tell he was looking at my face, focusing on the gun in my mouth and my incoherent sounds of pleasure, but I couldn’t angle my head any further than that.

He pulled his fingers out of me, and I could hear him fumble with the bottle of lube (probably from my room), using only one hand because he was still holding the gun in my mouth. Then he pulled it out of my mouth to position his cock behind me, and he pushed. It was an odd sensation, different from Sherlock’s fingers, different from anything I’d ever felt before. I could feel the barrel of the gun, now finally warm and slick with my spit, pushed against my head.

Sherlock was moving so slowly inside of me. I was simultaneously relieved at how gently he was taking this, and desperate for him to push all the way inside me, to bury his cock as far into my arse as he could and pound into me. I wanted to to push back against him, but the gun on the back of my head kept me still.

He pushed in and then there it was, he was hitting just the right spot, and suddenly his hand was stroking up and down my cock in time with each, slow, thrust. He angled himself a little differently until he was hitting my glands more fully, getting deeper inside me. I was panting, and now I could feel Sherlock start to lose control too. The pressure of the gun on my head was erratic. The world had narrowed down to nothing but the cock in my arse, the hand jerking me off and the gun nestled right next to the place where my brain connected to my spinal cord. I think I would have been surprised by how much I needed this, how intense Sherlock’s cock filling me made the rest feel, if I had any room for thoughts besides “Sherlock” and “gun.” Sherlock was jerking his hand harder and harder, and his thighs were slapping against my arse. It was almost too much. The gun skittered off the back of my head to point at the ground when I couldn’t stay still any longer. I clutched my hair in my hands, pulling, trying to stave of the inevitable orgasm, and keep my hands from groping mindlessly at the floor. I found myself screaming. Jesus, this was it. My whole world went red, and from somewhere almost far away I heard the safety click back on right as Sherlock lost control. And then he was holding me and gasping for air, and I was twisting around in his arms and trying to see and touch his face.

He was flushed red from arousal and exertion, but I could also see tear marks on his face, and his dark hair was tacky with drops of blood. I had a feeling my shoulders would be bruised the next day, and maybe my face. And I definitely had rugburn.

I reached out to touch his his face and trace my thumb over his cheekbones, and he turned away, eyes focusing somewhere near the kitchen. “Don’t,” he said. I admit it hurt.

How could I explain to him that I was drawn to his violence like I’d never been drawn to anything. That for the first time I felt like I was looking at someone who wouldn’t be reviled by me if they knew for a second the kind of thoughts I had to repress.

“Sherlock, can you maybe not do this thing now? Maybe not draw away from me? Please fucking god, at least not on a night where you have fucked me senseless. Tomorrow. Go back to feeling sorry for yourself and alone tomorrow. Not now. Get it through your thick fucking skull that I’m not leaving. You have me. You own me. We are a matched pair, with apparently well matched neurosis. So just... let’s lay down on this rug for a moment and bask in some post-coital bliss. That--That’s a bloody order.”

Sherlock reached out to touch my hair, and exhaled long and slow. His answer was to pull me close and lay me down in his arms. This wasn’t solving anything, but I couldn’t bring myself to care, not with Sherlock’s fingers rubbing light, lazy circles over my scalp.

END


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